Elena Tatievskaya (Augsburg) gives a talk at the MCMP Colloquium (4 November, 2015) titled "Gustav Shpet on the Function of Understanding History". Abstract: I discuss the question whether the method of history can be characterized with the help of the concept of understanding without reference to empathy. I consider as an argument for such a possibility Shpet’s (1879-1937) “logic of history”. Its formulation is based upon the assumption that the subject matter of history defines the peculiarities of its methods. According to Shpet history deals with “organizations which function as “messages”. The meaning of such a message is an end-means-relation to be defined. Therefore understanding which is an instrument of historical cognition and fulfills the task of concept formation is directed to objects which have semiotic nature. Historical concepts differ from concepts of natural sciences and are formulated in the form of descriptions used to explain an individual  historical change by means of a theory.

Elena Tatievskaya (Augsburg) gives a talk at the MCMP Colloquium (4 November, 2015) titled "Gustav Shpet on the Function of Understanding History". Abstract: I discuss the question whether the method of history can be characterized with the help of the concept of understanding without reference to empathy. I consider as an argument for such a possibility Shpet’s (1879-1937) “logic of history”. Its formulation is based upon the assumption that the subject matter of history defines the peculiarities of its methods. According to Shpet history deals with “organizations which function as “messages”. The meaning of such a message is an end-means-relation to be defined. Therefore understanding which is an instrument of historical cognition and fulfills the task of concept formation is directed to objects which have semiotic nature. Historical concepts differ from concepts of natural sciences and are formulated in the form of descriptions used to explain an individual historical change by means of a theory.

Gustav Shpet on the Function of Understanding History

Mathematical Philosophy - the application of logical and mathematical methods in philosophy - is about to experience a tremendous boom in various areas of philosophy. At the new Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy, which is funded mostly by the German Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, philosophical research will be carried out mathematically, that is, by means of methods that are very close to those used by the scientists.
The purpose of doing philosophy in this way is not to reduce philosophy to mathematics or to natural science in any sense; rather mathematics is applied in order to derive philosophical conclusions from philosophical assumptions, just as in physics mathematical methods are used to derive physical predictions from physical laws.
Nor is the idea of mathematical philosophy to dismiss any of the ancient questions of philosophy as irrelevant or senseless: although modern mathematical philosophy owes a lot to the heritage of the Vienna and Berlin Circles of Logical Empiricism, unlike the Logical Empiricists most mathematical philosophers today are driven by the same traditional questions about truth, knowledge, rationality, the nature of objects, morality, and the like, which were driving the classical philosophers, and no area of traditional philosophy is taken to be intrinsically misguided or confused anymore. It is just that some of the traditional questions of philosophy can be made much clearer and much more precise in logical-mathematical terms, for some of these questions answers can be given by means of mathematical proofs or models, and on this basis new and more concrete philosophical questions emerge. This may then lead to philosophical progress, and ultimately that is the goal of the Center.

Mathematical Philosophy - the application of logical and mathematical methods in philosophy - is about to experience a tremendous boom in various areas of philosophy. At the new Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy, which is funded mostly by the German Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, philosophical research will be carried out mathematically, that is, by means of methods that are very close to those used by the scientists. The purpose of doing philosophy in this way is not to reduce philosophy to mathematics or to natural science in any sense; rather mathematics is applied in order to derive philosophical conclusions from philosophical assumptions, just as in physics mathematical methods are used to derive physical predictions from physical laws. Nor is the idea of mathematical philosophy to dismiss any of the ancient questions of philosophy as irrelevant or senseless: although modern mathematical philosophy owes a lot to the heritage of the Vienna and Berlin Circles of Logical Empiricism, unlike the Logical Empiricists most mathematical philosophers today are driven by the same traditional questions about truth, knowledge, rationality, the nature of objects, morality, and the like, which were driving the classical philosophers, and no area of traditional philosophy is taken to be intrinsically misguided or confused anymore. It is just that some of the traditional questions of philosophy can be made much clearer and much more precise in logical-mathematical terms, for some of these questions answers can be given by means of mathematical proofs or models, and on this basis new and more concrete philosophical questions emerge. This may then lead to philosophical progress, and ultimately that is the goal of the Center.

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Gustav Shpet on the Function of Understanding History

Gustav Shpet on the Function of Understanding History

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